


Sunscreen

by leiascully



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, On the Run, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:19:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: There is no lotion or cream or pill that can block the effect that he has on her. She wouldn’t use it if there were.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: post-S9  
> A/N: For an anonymous Tumblr user.  
> Disclaimer: _The X-Files_ and all related characters are the property of Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox Studios. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

She always carries sunscreen. Mulder doesn’t seem to burn; his tan just deepens and deepens until he’s bronzed and languid in the heat. Even when they’re fleeing for their lives, she makes him stop at the corner pharmacy or the town’s one grocery store so that she can buy her SPF 45.

“I like your freckles,” Mulder tells her, tracing across her cheek.

“Thank you,” she says. “But we’re at risk enough, Mulder. I’m not getting skin cancer along with everything else.”

He’s kind enough to smooth the sunscreen over her shoulders, her neck, her back, her thighs. There’s no altruism in it, really, but she appreciates it anyway. They have slick, beach-scented sex, fumbling at each other’s clothes in the back of their succession of cheap cars and cheap motel rooms, and once or twice with the sun beating down directly on their bare skins.

They drive on endless dusty roads. The sun glares through the windshield. She hides her eyes behind dark lenses and thinks about the way that the light sustains and irradiates the world around her. It is necessary and deadly and all she can do is try to find some balance point.

She looks at Mulder. There is no lotion or cream or pill that can block the effect that he has on her. She wouldn’t use it if there were.

They drive on through the bleakness of desert and plains, her freckles blooming one by one as her cells react to the infusion of the sunlight. Mulder squints against the brightness, but there’s a smile lingering on his lips, like the afterimage of brilliance that changes when she blinks.


End file.
